Chad: Rivera maintains 0.00 ERA

COUCH SLOUCHWith Yankees' Rivera, anything is possible

NORMAN CHAD |
May 13, 2008

Between watching every NBA playoff game on TV and watching Hillary Clinton contemplate using one of her replay challenges to obtain the Democratic presidential nomination, a curious baseball thought struck me the other day:

Now, I'm usually not given to thinking about the New York Yankees, other than checking the scores daily to see if they lost — when the Yankees andRed Sox both lose, I have two cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon with breakfast — but I have become absorbed by Rivera's pursuit of perfection.

We are one-quarter through the baseball season and Rivera's ERA is 0.00. I checked with Bill James — it is a statistical impossibility to have a lower ERA than 0.00.

He's pitched 15 innings in 14 games this year, with 10 saves, allowing six hits, no walks and no runs, earned or otherwise. A couple of other closers, the Phillies' Brad Lidge and the Royals' Joakim Soria, also have 0.00 ERAs at the moment, but the otherworldly Rivera is the one destined to go an entire season without allowing a run.

Could it really happen?

Fact: An Iowa man by the name of Charles Osborne had the hiccups for 20 years.

(Column Intermission I: Here is the opening line of Chapter 20 of Living on the Black, literary bon vivant John Feinstein's latest cookie-cutter book on Tom Glavine and Mike Mussina: "During the first nine days of interleague play, it appeared that National League baseball was exactly what the doctor had ordered for the Yankees." And here's the closing line of Chapter 28: "Their fate was in their own hands." The man can certainly turn a phrase.)

Rivera once pitched a record 34 1/3 consecutive scoreless innings without allowing a run in postseason play.

Rivera is so good, I believe he could save Eliot Spitzer from himself.

With apologies to the NBA, Rivera is where amazing happens routinely.

As a 20-year-old shortstop prospect in Panama in 1990, he decided to pitch one day; a Yankees scout was at the game and signed him. Two years later, Rivera had Tommy John surgery — I think Tommy John performed the surgery himself — and he made it to the majors in 1995.

He became a setup man in 1996 for John Wetteland, when the Yankees employed their devastatingly effective "6-2-1" strategy: six innings from the starting pitcher, two from Rivera and one from Wetteland. Likewise, my first ex-wife executed her own "6-2-1" strategy: six months of marriage, two months of counseling and one month until divorce.

In 1997, Rivera developed his cut fastball, which he mixes in with his two-seam and four-seam fastball. Note: I am familiar with the intricacies of all of his pitch deliveries and release points, due to the fact that I once sat next to Tim McCarver on a nonstop flight from Newark, N.J., to Sydney, Australia.

(Column Intermission II: And now the closing words of the closing chapter of Living on the Black: "He would finish his career in a Braves uniform. He had proved, once and for all, that you could go home again." In Feinstein's defense, he only types with two fingers, so he can't reach all the letters on the keyboard.)

Rivera, 38, is third all-time in saves, plus has a 0.77 ERA in the postseason.

Waiting for Rivera to screw up is like waiting for Godot.

What's most impressive about his 453 saves in 512 opportunities is this: It's all been done under the watch of George Steinbrenner in New York, where you're never more than two blown saves away from a slow boat to Tampa.

I'm betting on Rivera to go 0.00 for '08.

Let me explain it this way: If you take any number, double it, add 10, divide by 2 and subtract your original number, the answer always will be 5. Similarly, if you bring Rivera in to pitch, the number of runs he allows always will be 0.

A: I laughed every time I called up this entry from my e-mail queue, so Mr. Reinhart has become the first twice-in-the-same-week Ask The Slouch winner.

Q: When Cedric Benson was arrested and charged with boating while intoxicated, officers had to pepper-spray him to get him down. Wouldn't Benson have been easier to get down if officers just handed a football off to him?

STU TENTONI Delafield, Wis.

A: Pay the man, Shirley.

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